Just bought skyrim on sale off steam and am encountering a minor but annoying graphical issue. While moving(and more noticable during daylight) there appears to be.... well some kind of pattern of spots or lines or background static like distortion. Tell you the truth i'm having a hard time trying to articulate exactly what it looks like. Ive done a few google searches about graphical glitches, white spots, lines, patterns, yada yada yada but everything ive seen is pretty blatant artifacting and obvious glitches. This is a lot more sublte, and a minor annoyance when all is said and done.

Just wondering if anyone has experienced anyrthing like this with skyrim or might have any ideas. I have tried lowering and completely disabling anti aliasing but didnt change anything.

Thanks for any help or assistance you may be able to offer.

P.S. - just remembered i have also noticed this whille moving the camera around during battles in shogun 2 total war

Not much information to go with, I don't even know if you have a desktop or a laptop, so posting your system specifications, including your monitor or TV model & setup would certainly help for people in here. You should also try to print screen or record the issue in play. Since you're encountering the same issue in other games I don't think this issue is related to Skyrim, but your hardware. But for now:

• Have you tried to reinstall or update your video card driver? This is fairly common and can save you a lot of trouble & time. (Remember to uninstall the current driver in the windows control panel before applying the latest version to avoid any collisions)

Graphical issues may also occur if you have clocked your video card over its threshold or for a while in long sessions damaging its lifespan. It could also be overheating due to dust, insufficient power supply or poor air cycle & flow inside the cabinet.

• Check your card's temperature & voltage under load with a monitor program - exempli gratia MSi Afterburner or EVGA Precision -
• Clean out your system of dust

Overused monitors & TV's can also create an illusion of graphical issues: heavily ghosting, low dim, dead or stuck pixels & poor contrast ratio. Though I don't think this is the issue you have, and it's fairly easy to see if it is, it's worth to troubleshoot to get it out of the system.

• Connect your PC to a different source & screen and see if the issue persist
• Try to connect different cables and see if the issue persist (VGA, DVI, HDMI cables)

I remember having similar issues when I tweaked the shadow settings in the INI-file, and messed up. The engine have a bad way of tracing shadows, mostly noticeable outdoors during the day.

I have no idea if your problem have anything to do with the shadows, worth looking up if nothing else works.

Check the framerate, try turning down the graphical settings. Those are the two really fast, easy things I'd suggest before going through any large maintenance.